First Click or Last Click What Matters More

There is always the discussion of first click or last click attribution where I work and its one of my favorite topics of discussion because both sides have value. But ultimately last click is probably the one most people will choose because it has the most conversions associated to it. In the click world it’s King of the Castle. Last click attribution is also the finality of a transaction, so it’s very important to know what keywords are closing the most revenue or leads. That’s really all that matters anyway…Or is it?

So what is the benefit of first click attribution?

Simply put, first click attribution is on the leading edge of your keyword periphery. You don’t always get to see a sale from first click, but these keywords (in my world) are actually the beginning stages of a sale. What I mean is that first click attribution for me has the propensity to be a researching the segment or vertical visitor, not ready to buy just yet, but getting there.

You can see the entire first click and last click attribution in Google AdWords. I suspect not a lot of people spend time looking at that data, but if you really want to understand why some keywords do not convert like you would expect, that’s one place I would start looking. A good friend of mine that I work with also created an in-house version of click attribution that is similar to Google’s, but it tracks revenue and up to 5 clicks. Consider it to be a more comprehensive report than what Google provides. It ties our internal tracking in ways that Google never could.